Dream of the Witch House part 1
by thursdaysisters
Summary: Supernatural/Lovecraft fic, Dean visits Dunwich to investigate a possible solution to the Leviathans and finds Castiel along the way.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Dream of the Witch House : part 1  
>author: thursdaysisters<br>rating: K for mild gore and sexual references  
>word count: 2,090<br>pairing: cas/dean  
>spoilers: up to ep 7.06<br>warning: these are not my characters  
>summary: SupernaturalLovecraft fic. Dean visits Dunwich, a town made legendary by HP Lovecraft, to investigate a possible solution to the Leviathans, where he finds Castiel.

Professor Hickman pulled back the safety, wishing the storm outside was a bit noisier, and leaned against the library door to listen.

"I've got nothing, Bobby," said the young man on the other side, "There's the guy's notes on opening a door into what looks like Monster Alcatraz, but I swear he's making up most of the words, dude uses vowels like Vanna White on mushrooms..."

Hickman took a deep breath. The burglar obviously thought the house was empty if he was talking in such a carrying voice.

"It says he managed the spell at one of the houses here in Dunwich, and if this is the same one Lovecraft mentioned then we may have a way to shove the Leviathans back in the box, but he's really vague on a street address, I'll have to break into city hall tonight and check the plat maps for property owners...no one will see me, the sidewalks roll up at 8 o'clock around here..."

Hickman rub a sweaty hand against his flannel robe and steeled himself.

"Yeah I'll call back in a minute, the nerd outside doesn't know that I hid his bullets-" he said as he opened the door, "-or that I swiped his porn collection."

Hickman blinked. "My...?"

Dean shut his cell phone and turned back toward a pile of books. "Hiding them behind _The__Sorrows__of__Young__Werther_is only slightly more original than the sock drawer, I'd have made space behind those law manuals."

Hickman's eyes darted to the magazines. "They're erm, they weren't-"

"They're not yours, you're keeping them from your horny nephew, who apparently spends his quality shower time fantasizing about..." he said, leafing through an especially dog-eared issue, "...piano teachers with whips."

Hickman blushed.

Dean dropped it on the floor. "Whatever. I need your help with something, and Bobby Singer recommended you."

"Singer? The mechanic?"

Dean sat down heavily in the antique chair behind the desk. Dunwich lacked both strip clubs and bars, which meant he was about an hour's research away from a really wonderful headache. "He visited your library years back, said you used to teach math at Miskatonic University?"

Hickman looked down at the gun, as if for the first time, and hastily stowed it in his robe pocket. "Retired."

"Forcefully," said Dean, fingering a scrap of newspaper, "For, let me see if I'm quoting it right, 'Accessory to kidnapping a faculty member'?"

"What? I, no, I, where did you find that?"

Dean made a throw-away gesture with one hand. "Miskatonic Police Department has crap for firewalls. Now, you gonna tell me what happened to your friend Doctor Pyesell? Seeing as you were the last man to speak with him before his disappearance?"

Hickman almost refused. The man in his chair, HIS chair, was half his age, and has gotten his dirty fingerprints all over his books.

But then he noticed his clothes, how they were so drenched with rain that he had made little puddles all over the carpet.

"Just a moment." he said, as he left the room, and returned with his electric kettle and two cups. Dean looked taken aback. "The storms are awful here, I always feel better with some hot tea."

Hickman glanced around, and realized that Dean was sitting in the only chair in the room. But burglar or not, the man was a guest, a guest half his age, with ten times his strength, and all of his bullets, and so he contented himself with a small tower of dictionaries in the corner while he poured.

"Pyesell had told me about the Witch's House several years ago, but I never actually followed him there." he began.

"The what house?"

"Oh it's one of the oldest structures here in the city," he said, the steam fogging his glasses, "A witch had disappeared inside it back when the Puritans settled here and then...no, I need to go back farther. Pyesell had discovered part of a sequence when he was a student, a magic sequence."

Dean looked confused.

"A set of numbers," he said, handing the other cup to Dean, "Only this set, if ordered properly, could open a door, like a combination lock on a safe."

"And has anyone opened that door?"

Hickman smiled. "He thinks the witch did."

"The one in this house that you've never seen."

"Correct."

Dean leaned forward, and Hickman flinched. "Where's the house?"

"I...I don't know. I was too afraid."

"What, you think the witch is still there?"

"Oh no, she's long gone, it's just...the closer you are, the more afraid you become." he said, watching the teabag stain the water black, "It's uncanny."

"Huh," said Dean, leaning back and propped his boots on the desk, "Must be some sort of warding spell to keep folks away."

"Must be, it's quite remote, it always took Pyesell a long time to get there and back."

"So this...math spell," said Dean, pointing a finger at an open journal, "It opens a door. To where?"

"Pyesell was...not in his right mind," he said, the rain lashing at the window, "He took a lot of pills before venturing out to the Witch's house, he was convinced that only madmen could truly perceive how the sequence worked."

"Well that makes sense," said Dean, flipping to a page, "These numbers are gibberish."

"Oh the numbers make sense-" he faltered as Dean gave him a dirty look, "-to a mathematician at least, but it's incomplete. You can only know how it finishes if..."

"...if you're dosed up, I get it. Some kind of Ivy League zen riddle." He slammed the journal shut. "So your friend got baked, walked into a cursed house that no one's seen, the voices in his head helped him cheat on a Monster Calculas test, and he walked thru a door that was Exit Only?"

"..essentially."

Dean smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere."

Dean shook the little orange canister. "There's only one pill left."

Professor Hickman scratched his neck nervously. "That's plenty. You'll be in an altered state for at least twelve hours."

Dean smiled, impressed against his will. "Math teachers have more fun than I gave them credit for." he said, popping the lid with his thumb and swallowing it dry. "Ugh, tastes like battery acid. What now? When will I notice any changes?"

"Twenty, maybe thirty minutes. You'll want to eat if you haven't already, there's a diner close by."

"Thanks," said Dean, studying his reflection in a mirror to see if it would change, wondering if this was how Sam felt all the time now.

"Don't forget this." said Hickman, handing him the journal, "Once the drugs kick in and..."

"And I'm certifiable, the journal notes will start making sense?"

Hickman looked away. "Not just the math in his journal entries. All numbers will appear to be part of the sequence. Pyesell became obsessed with it, to the point of forgetting where he was, or when it was. I think he even forgot his own name."

Dean snorted, but not very convincingly.

"But once he had the solution, he made straight for the Witch's House to perform the ritual. I think he wrote it on the wall of her bedroom, I remember because he tried it several times before getting it right."

"Well if you see me in saffron robes selling flowers at the airport, be sure to put a bullet between my eyes." said Dean, stuffing the journal inside his coat pocket.

The diner was adjacent to a train-switching station, where some enterprising soul had welded three shipping containers together and filled it with chairs and the smell of bacon grease. The news glowed in a corner television, and the cook worked over an open grill behind the counter.

"Evening," said Dean, glancing up at the menu on the wall, "Cheeseburger, pie, and coffee."

"Have to brew you a new pot, the stuff we've got's been boiling so long it'd strip paint." said the cook, pouring a spoonful of lard onto the grill for some hash.

"Whenever is fine, I'll start with dessert." he said, eyeing a display case with the loveliest blueberry pie he'd seen in ages.

The cook wiped his hands on his butt and plucked out a knife while Dean pulled the journal out onto the counter, absently listening to the TV in the background.

_"...now__I__don't__have__the__facts__to__back__this__up,__but__I__believe__the__White__House__staged__these__protests."_

The numbers swam like insects. He wished Sam were here, he had a head for figures.

_"...now__I__don't__have__the__facts__to__back__this__up,__but__I__believe__that__bilingualism__is__akin__to__creeping__communism."_

He tried focusing on the first line of the set, and quickly discovered that they were all primes. The further down he looked, he found primes down into the fifth digit range, when last week he had struggled with adding a fifteen percent tip to his bill.

_"...now__I__don't__have__the__facts__to__back__this__up,__but__I__believe__that__the__Food__Stamp__program__is__undermining__this__nation's__Long-Pork__industry."_

He rubbed his temples and wished he could just go to bed, or that this would start making sense. He looked up at the menu, and the prices suddenly fit a pattern he hadn't noticed a few minutes go, constellations chalked on a greasy blackboard.

_"...now__I__don't__have__the__facts__to__back__this__up,__but__I__believe__that__R'lyeh__is__the__candidate__we__need__in__2012."_

"Coffee's ready." said the cook, placing a mug in front of him.

"Oh you are a lifesaver." he said, tearing his eyes away from the numbers and taking a sip. "Wow this is amazing, what's in it?"

"Well ya know, I like my coffee like I like my women." he said, and when he turned to smile, his mouth was a bloody horror, teeth stained red. "Ground up and in the freezer."

Dean choked, and when he brought his hand up to his mouth, bits of hair, long hairs with skin attached, came away.

"It's not real."

Dean looked up. When he glanced at his coffee again, it was just coffee, black and hairless.

"You get a knack for knowing when it's real or not, give it a week."

He looked down at a grandmother who came up to his chest, knitting bag in hand.

"Don't mind Maizie, she stopped taking her meds in March."

"I don't like taking the pills," she said tartly, "When I worked at the phone company, I never took any pills, and I had psychic abilities."

The cook waved her off and turned back to the grill. "That so?" said Dean, starting to wonder if she was another figment.

"Oh yes," she said gravely, leaning to whisper, "I could tell you what someone would say over the phone before they even made the call."

"Huh." said Dean, sipping his coffee for lack of a polite response.

"But then the doctor gave me the prescription and...it gets so lonely."

"With only one voice in your head?"

She faltered a little, and for a second Dean felt sorry for being so rude. "When I take the pills, the angels won't have sex with me." she said.

"I'm sorry, what?" said Dean, spilling coffee over his hand.

"The angel Gabriel came to me at night," she said, her glasses glinting, "And made sweet love to me, all the time. That man was a fiend in bed, did you know he would take a stick of butter and-"

"Nope nope nope don't need to hear this, that's...that's lovely what you two shared." he said, trying not to picture Gabriel with a tub of margarine and a knowing smile.

After she left, the rest of his food arrived, and Dean sat down to take another look at the numbers. He could feel the pill working for real now, the paper felt textureless under his fingers, and the pie was so much wet cardboard in his mouth. Nothing felt real.

"Hi Dean."

A man took the stool next to him, or rather, one minute the stool was empty and the next it had a man on it.

"Cas?"


	2. Chapter 2

"We don't have much time," said Castiel, "There are others in this town who seek to undermine your efforts, and the drugs in your system will wear off by sunrise."

Dean was speechless. He reached out, one hand over Cas's, and brought it down on empty air. "You're not real."

"I am," he said, "You'll have quite a number of hallucinations over the next few hours, but I am real, probably more so as you become progressively unhinged."

"Why can't I touch you?"

"The vessel was destroyed. I was not."

Dean looked up just as the fry cook looked away, clearly wondering who Dean was speaking to. "So what now?" he whispered.

"You need to focus your mind on Pyesell's sequence. Find a place where you won't be distracted, preferably with a source of randomly generated numbers."

"How is that supposed to help me?" asked Dean sharply, tossing some cash on the counter and walking out the door, "I'm supposed to find a stock exchange in Bubbaville here?"

Castiel looked over Dean's shoulder, and said, "There are other ways."

A phone booth stood on the street corner, with a bookish young woman inside who was having trouble fishing change out of her purse while keeping her glasses on straight.

"Never had a librarian fetish." said Dean.

"Not her," said Cas, "The phonebook."

Dean blinked. "Oh yeah, I'll just...get that."

The girl's timing couldn't have been better, the glasses slipped off her nose and into Dean's grasp right as he walked up to her. She squealed in alarm.

"Take it!" she shrieked, throwing the purse at him, "Don't hurt me!"

Dean backed away. "Hold on, I'm not robbing anyone, I just " he said, trailing off. He swore he could hear the phone booth breathing, its plastic walls expanding and contracting,

" need the phonebook." he finished.

She stood stockstill, measuring him as he passed the glasses back. The drugs warped her face, but he found it pleasant in a beer goggles sort of way. As he reached down to take the phonebook, his smile made her blush.

"You need this?" he asked.

"N-no, I've got the number memorized," she said, "312-555-8574."

Something fell into place in Dean's head, and he closed his eyes for a moment as if the answer were on the back of his eyelids.

"Say that again." he said. Leaning on the booth for support, he recoiled, the phone vibrating like the uvula of a sleeping giant as the doorframe stretched to swallow him.

"Ummm..."

"Any number, at all." he said, putting a hand on her hip, meaning to steer her out of harm's way.

"4368543780, are you alright?"

Her face shifted, eyes set far apart to either side of her head and a smile that cut her face in half. But her presence was comforting, now that she was less afraid of him, and he found himself clutching her as the phone booth leered at him hungrily.

"8976329790 "

The numbers drifted through him like an old misremembered song. He stared back at the booth, the phone book swinging on its chain like a worm on a hook, and it stared back.

"You live around here?" he asked, a little shakily.

"Why?" she asked, wary, though not enough to pull away from his touch, "Did you want to get out of the rain?"

He was about to fabricate some story of the academic conference at Miskatonic that he was supposed to attend, something of the town's woeful lack of Motel 6s, when he recognized the invitation in her voice, and he fell back on more practiced lies. "Anyone ever tell you," he said, smiling at the thought of her warm, dry house, "That you have a great bedroom voice?"

Five minutes later they were home, purse in the kitchen, wet clothes on the floor.

"88768724578..." she said, fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. He didn't kiss her, frankly scared of what her teeth might feel like, and instead insisted that she keep up the stream of numbers. And with his face buried in her neck, he pressed against her warm soft flesh and felt the sequence hum through his brain.

"384678989 um um 5387789598 that feels amazing..." she said.

It sounded like a chorus of bees, like a language that he would understand if he could just listen for a few more seconds

"Dean, we don't have time for this." said Cas, standing by the bed with a disapproving look, "You need to be writing all this down for the ritual tonight, you'll never be able to remember it all."

Dean sighed. Outside, a tree branch beat against the window, tick-tock, tick-tock.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"What?" she said, struggling with her pantyhose.

Dean stood up, snagging a pen off her nightstand. "I'm Dean."

She sat up, confused. "Rachel."

"Right," he said, uncapping the pen and writing on her wallpaper, "Rachel, could you do me a huge favor and write down everything I'm about to tell you?"

"Why don't you write it yourself?" she said, putting her glasses back on with a nasty snap.

But as he began to write, the symbols did not even begin to resemble any human script. To his eye, they bent and wriggled like spit under a microscope, and even glowed if he touched them.

"Cuz I'm seeing this in a different light." he said, and as he wrote, he rattled off figures to her, some going from left to right, some in clockwise circles, others in counterclockwise.

"You mind looking somewhere else Cas?" he asked.

"I've seen you naked before Dean."

Dean looked down, and realized his pants were in the next room. "I mean the Demon Leetspeak I've got going here. It can't be good for you to look at."

"Only you perceive it's true form. It cannot hurt me, or the girl."

"who are you talking to?" asked Rachel.

"Just talking out loud," he said, and when he finished he turned around. "Be right back, pants are in the kitchen.

She stared disbelievingly. "But...we were..."

"The chicks I sleep with usually meet with a bad end, you're better off not sticking your hand in this blender." he said as he snatched the papers from her grip.

She looked at him angrily for a few seconds, and then down at her hands, too well-bred to curse aloud. Dean realized that for the second time tonight, he'd been a complete dick to a stranger.

Taking her chin in his hand, he said, "You never been with a man?"

She shook her hand.

"I don't deserve the honor then."

After he walked out, she picked up the phone.

"Hey," she said, "Come pick me up. I think I found your guy."

Dean huddled against the rain, and wished for the thousandth time that he had his old car. He'd never liked the cold, but the drugs made it impossible to ignore, so that he despaired of ever being warm again.

"We go east." he said.

"Why?" asked Castiel.

"Cuz the warding spell on that house is supposed to scare off any unexpected visitors, and I get the creeps everytime I even look at the shoreline.

Sure enough, the city limits ended just a few blocks away, and after that was a shipping yard that had sat empty for at least fifty years. The witch's house wouldn't be far.

With the streets deserted, Dean didn't bother to keep his voice down. "So how come you didn't try and contact us before now?" he asked.

"Most of my power is gone," said Cas, the rain falling straight thru him, "and...you were angry."

Dean laughed humorlessly.

"We can speak as long as you are drugged. In time, I may be able to physically aid you, but at that point you may be so mentally deranged that you would fail to recognize me."

"Wonderful." said Dean, kicking a rock and watching it leave a smoky trail in the air. "Was that...?"

"It's not real," said Cas, "The Witch's house will be especially difficult to grasp, since it has had centuries to absorb mystical energy."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that there are two houses, the seen structure and the unseen structure."

Dean reached out to grab Cas's shoulder and closed on nothing.

"Exactly." said Cas.

"I wasn't...never mind, what does that mean, seen and unseen?"

"Buildings, the old ones at least, dream just like humans. In the dream of the Witch's house, there are many rooms. Should we be so fortunate as to find the correct house and get past it's wards, you will have to enter it's dream and conduct the ritual from there."

"So I need to be asleep?"

"That would be ideal, yes."

Dean rubbed grit from his eyes, wishing he could sleep right now on the wet pavement. "Down the rabbit hole we go then."

"Dean."

"What?"

"Where are we?"

Dean looked around. They were back in front of Rachel's apartment.

"But...we've been walking..." he said, turning in all directions.

"Someone is trying to prevent us from leaving," said Cas, "There is a group of individuals that I cannot locate, they have been working against us today. They must have set a binding spell on you."

"I don't know anyone here, who could...?"

Right then, a car pulled up.

"Need to be somewhere?" asked a quavery female voice.

Dean peered inside. "Maizie?"

The crazy old woman from the diner smiled, her head barely clearing the steering wheel. "You've got an appointment young man."

He looked at Cas, and shrugged. As he climbed into the passenger seat, Maizie adjusted her mirrors and asked, "Who's your friend?"

Dean started, but Cas replied, "I am Castiel." When Dean gave him a questioning look, Cas said, "This woman is mentally unbalanced, it gives her unique abilities, such as speaking to angels."

"Ooooo you've got one too!" she said approvingly, giving Dean a little slap on the thigh, "Use a condom though, nothing's worse than sleeping on the wet spot."

Dean gritted his teeth. "Where are you taking us?"

She put the car into drive and gunned the engine. "Call it a house-warming party."


	3. Chapter 3

The Sisters of Mercy clinic had been boarded up years ago for code violations, and now the only entrance was an underground drainage tunnel.

Dean prodded the sewer lid with his boot. "Who all is down there?"

"Oh most of the town's inside," said Maizie, her voice muffled as she pulled a brown hooded robe over her face, "We've been meeting at the clinic for weeks, but now we have everything we need."

"Uh-huh." he said, looking first up at the storm clouds and then down at the hole in the ground, and wishing he were in bed.

"They must know you're after Purgatory." said Castiel, "The city of Dunwich has a history of cult activity, they must be trying to summon something tonight."

"Something like that." she said, peering into a side mirror to straighten her pentacle broach, which appeared to be fashioned out of rhinestones.

"You've got a...a sock on your robe."

She looked down. "Oh!" she exclaimed, peeling a baby sock from her hem, "You wouldn't believe how many of these you lose in the wash."

The tunnel was low enough to scrape Dean's head, but the drugs made his steps echo many, many more times than should have been possible in that space, as if he were walking thru a watery cathedral. He could see a door in the distance, but to him it loomed miles away.

Dean looked to his left. While everything around him sloshed like a black soup, Castiel glowed as if made of moonlight.

"My God, it's full of stars." said Dean, giggling a little, and stopping abruptly when Maizie gave him a sharp look.

"Why are you staring at me?" asked Cas.

"I..." he started, and cleared his throat. "I just wonder if you're really here or not."

"You are not Sam."

"I know." said Dean, "But tonight is it, isn't it? By tomorrow, everything will be back to normal and..."

"I never left," said Castiel, "You were never alone."

"And there was no way, in your infinite wisdom, that you could have let me know?"

"You've lost family before."

"Easy for you to say," he said bitterly, and then in a lower voice, "I didn't even have a body to bury."

Castiel seemed about to say something when Maizie turned on her heel.

"Keep your voices down!" she hissed, "And put this in your pocket."

She thrust a little plastic baggie into Dean's hand. "...bacon?" he asked.

"City didn't have the budget for professional security." she said, as fiddled in her pocket for a set of keys.

"How long is this tunnel?" he whispered to Cas.

"What do you mean?"

And just like that, they were at the entrance.

Dean flinched. "It feels like I've been walking for hours."

"You're experiencing time dilation. The effects of the drugs are starting to peak." said Cas.

At the end of an unfinished basement was another door, light spilling from the hole where a handle had once been. As he took a step forward, he felt the room...breath on him.

"Um..." he said, as something a foot from the floor slithered around his ankles.

"Shake the bag." said Maizie.

He did as he was told, and whatever had been watching him suddenly felt less hostile.

"Just toss it in the corner," she said, "They'll chew right thru the plastic."

Dean wondered if the thing had left anything on his pant leg, when voices on the other side of the door suddenly quieted down.

"Maizie?" a voice called out, "Did you bring him?"

"Yes indeed," she said.

"Good," said Rachel, as she tossed a match onto the floor and circle of holy oil erupted around Castiel, "Tie up the other one, we won't be needing him."

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	4. Chapter 4

"Do you know who the greatest hunter was?" asked Rachel, copying something out of an ancient book and handing it to a minion.

"The one that got off a shot before the monologuing started?" Dean replied, as two other cultists cuffed him to a chair. He wondered if she could be a slapper or a spitter, and bet a dollar on the former.

"Dante." she said, slamming the book shut, "His is the only detailed account we have of the afterlife, and even that one is sadly out of date."

"So that's your idea of a hunter? Some sissy Italian who writes poetry out of his medieval Trapper Keeper?"

She spat in his face, and he squinched his eyes, thinking he hadn't really wanted that dollar. "We heard about your break-in at Hickman's library. For every butcher like you, there's a hundred scholars who risk their lives collecting information on monsters."

Bobby came to his mind, how Sam and Dean always took his research for granted.

"Something has gotten loose from Purgatory," she continued, "And Pyesell knew something was in the works long before, it's why he entered the portal in the first place. Dante's book might have been useful to us before the Apocalypse, but everything's changed."

"You knew about that?"

In the corner, Maizie was humming to herself while drawing sigils on the wall in black blood.

"She talks to angels." said Dean.

"And she knew that the only way to safely walk thru Purgatory was with an angel as a guide."

"How did you know to find Castiel?"

"Gabriel told me," said Maizie, wiping ichor on a monogrammed hanky, "He said, 'That Dean Winchester is always sticking up for his boyfriend', and then told me your name."

Dean looked over at Castiel. "Can you really get someone in and out of Purgatory, even without a vessel?"

Castiel looked uncertain. "It's possible. I myself have never gone, and there's no telling what it's like now that Eve is dead."

"It's worth the risk," said Rachel, leaning into Dean's face, "We have the entire occult department of Miskatonic University in this room, with your friend's help-"

"You're right." he said.

Her mouth opened to retort, but she came up short. "...really?"

It killed him to admit it, all the times Sam had been ditched at a library while Dean and John played hero, or the curt phone calls to Bobby's house, but she had a point. "I'd be dead a hundred times over if I hadn't had access to some of the books your type put together. If the Mathletes can get in and out with some solution to the Leviathan problem, and if you have Cas's consent, I won't stop you."

She looked at him sideways, considering. "Maizie?"

"Yef?" said the old lady, a leather belt between her teeth and a squirming teenager in her grip.

"Prepare the angel."

"Juff a mimit." she replied, as she tightened the belt around the boy's upper arm, pressed a knife to his vein, and said, "Don't worry, there's Nutter Butters and Tang when this is all over."

Dean looked up at Rachel. The drugs in his system softened the edges of the world, so that human faces looked like pink blobs framed by hair, and he was only able to tell her apart by her glasses. "Can I talk to him, before he leaves with you all?"

She pursed her lips. "The cuffs stay."

He was escorted up to the circle of flames, and he thought he heard whispering.

"Cas, who are you talking to?"

"The angels are talking," he said, his head cocked to one side listening, "They think I should go with them."

"But what if you don't come back?" he said, his heart freezing in his chest.

Castiel looked straight at him. "What is my purpose here on Earth?"

Dean wanted to list a thousand reasons, and they boiled down to "You can't leave me here."

"Would it be easier knowing that I was always watching you, unseen, unheard, unreachable, or that I was elsewhere and doing some good?"

Dean stared into the fire. He was surprised how cold the flames felt as they licked at his feet.

"We're ready," said Rachel, touching Dean's shoulder.

"But why Castiel?" asked Dean, his voice cracking, "If you've got Miss Angel Food Cake here, why pick one that hasn't even got a body anymore?"

"Because he let the monsters out in the first place," said a man, his face concealed behind a hood, "It is fitting that he put them back."

Dean turned his head. The guy looked human, but the black veins in his face said otherwise.

"Doctor Pyesell I presume."  
>Tags: castiel, dean, destiel, leviathans ( Leave a comment ) <p>


	5. Chapter 5

Dean struggled against the handcuffs, counting thirty leviathans (plus the goons on either side of him) and only one exit.

Rachel walked up to Pyesell, an unsteady hand straightening her glasses as if to see him better. "But you were dead Professor! You couldn't have escaped on your own."

"Not alone," he said, and the thirty figures smiled in unison. "I found a higher power in Purgatory, and they welcomed me."

Rachel glanced around the room. "What have you done to them?"

"They're not your friends," said Dean, "In all likelihood they were jumped weeks ago. Wouldn't have been hard, seeing as you have walk thru a storm drain tunnel to get here."

"I don't understand-" Rachel began, before Pyesell flung her against a wall, and she lay in a moaning heap.

"Smart girl," said Pyesell, flexing his hand and looking down at her, "Get in a power nap before we start pulling your intestines through your eye socket."

"So what, trying to open Purgatory to let in more of your bunkmates?" asked Dean.

The goons gave his arms a good yank, and he felt both shoulders dislocate. His scream echoed around the concrete room.

Pyesell gripped his jaw in one hand and forced him up. "You know what her problem was?" he asked casually.

Sweat beaded down Dean's face, and it took him several seconds to get enough air into his lungs. "She doesn't like the taste of evil dick?"

For a second Pyesell looked like he would quite like to hit him, but instead he turned to glare at Castiel. "She had no instinct for long-term goals."

"So it's not enough that you turned against your own race and let these creeps take over the planet?"

Pyesell gave a harsh laugh. "Roman can have it. Who wants to hang out on the dance floor when you could be in the DJ booth?"

Dean couldn't see Castiel's face, but he could imagine the fear on it.

"You can only mimic humans," said Castiel, "You can't know how..."

"Used to not know. But after spending some quality time in your head, reverse engineering your grace, we found that mimicking angels was an achievable goal. Not easy, but with strength in numbers, and access to some of the greatest occult minds in history..." he said, his hand taking in what had been Miskatonic University's faculty.

"Why Heaven?" asked Cas.

"They have it coming," said Pyesell, the holy oil flames underlighting his face, black-veined skin stretched tight over his bones, "You think you had it bad, watching men waste their gift of redemption?"

"You were uncontrollable, Father had to put you away."

"And you enjoy your job? Taking this crappy government outpost job here on Earth, with no orders for two thousand years?"

Castiel shifted uneasily. "I am a soldier."

"Right," said Pyesell, rolling his eyes, "He giving you orders to stay now that you've mowed down a big chunk of his army?"

"I choose to stay."

Pyesell gave Dean a sideways smile, before walking away to confer with the others. "Figured you would."

"What's going on?" whispered Dean, so hoarsely he was afraid he wouldn't be understood.

"The Leviathans want revenge for their millenia of imprisonment. They plan to copy me and storm Heaven's gate."

"And I'm still alive because...?"

Castiel faltered. "They need collateral. They know I would submit in a hostage situation."

Dean turned his head a little, confused.

"I can leave any time, Dean," he said, pained, "This fire obstructs me, but I could recover from the damage in this form."

"Then go." Dean hissed, spitting blood on the floor, "Get help."

"Dean-"

"Run you idiot!"

One of the men on his arm attempted to silence him, when Dean threw his weight to the side and managed to knock him onto the circle of fire. The pain was blinding, but he managed a quick nod to Cas.

"Where did he go?" asked Pyesell, rounding on the three men sprawled on the floor, "Where is the angel?"

"He's gone." said Dean, his voice lower than usual.

Pyesell snarled and kicked at the minion who was now writhing in agony as the flames burned his clothes away. "Get up, you're such a baby."

As he turned away, Dean's eyes flashed open, pupils glowing white. The handcuff links snapped like thread, and a fist came down on the back of Pyesell's skull, caving it in.

It didn't slow him down much, but it gave Dean a few seconds lead time. "Get them!" yelled Pyesell, as the black blood oozed back up his leg from the floor.

Through the door and out the basement, he hopped over the slithering floor, his boots touching lightly on the backs of things that remembered his recent offering and paid him no mind.

When he reached the other side, he turned to look at the thirty robed figures that stood to overtake him.

"You forgot the bacon." he said.

Cats. Hundreds of them. In the sewers of Dunwich, where necromancers and chemists alike dumped their leftovers down the kitchen sink. Some had legs like centipedes, others had a third eye, and one might have been cursing in Latin, but with any luck it was the drugs talking.

Dean had never seen Maizie's "security" guards, and they wouldn't be able to bestow any fatal injuries, but with Castiel's night vision, he could take a second to appreciate the Leviathans' howls of surprise.

Once he was up the ladder and out in the rain again, Castiel stepped out of Dean's body, which was now completely repaired.

"Ugh," Dean said, clutching his head, "Never again. I am too short for that ride."

"We must move," said Castiel, "They will not be deterred long. The Witch's house is close by, we must open the portal and send them back to Purgatory."

"What...?" asked Dean vaguely, trying to remember where he was.

Castiel looked alarmed. "You are starting to forget. You can feel the warding spell on the house, follow it."

Dean looked out toward the sea. He could feel it, and was afraid. He fell to one knee, his stomach churning as the fear bounced around his already addled head.

"I can't."

"Get up."

"I can't, I...I know what I have to do, but I'm so TIRED."

"Dean-"

"This whole town is hunting me down and I left that poor girl behind to be eaten and I'm still not sure if you're really here-"

"Dean please-"

"-and the rain won't STOP COMING DOWN."

"Dean." said Castiel, quietly now.

"What'll happen if they get into Heaven, Cas? My mom is up there," he said, shivering in the cold, "There's nothing I can do."

"Dean-"

He covered his face. "Just tell me some good news, cuz I'm about to lie down and let them kill me."

Castiel looked up at the sky. "When the sun rises, this will all be over."

"You can't know that."

"It's how all the stories end. Kill the villain, kiss the girl, live another day."

In the distance, lightning splintered the sky, once, twice, three times. It seemed to strike closer every time.

"Just...walk with me," Dean pleaded, "Don't leave. I can't do this alone."

The sounds of struggle could be heard underground, and Dean sucked in a lungful of wet night air and began to run.  
> <p>


	6. Chapter 6

"I can't go in there." said Dean, whose eyes were now completely unfocused with panic. The Witch's house was a fine example of what Calvinists could do with planks and leaded glass, but the combination of hallucinogens and anti-intruder magic turned it into a yawning horror.

"Once you cross the threshold, the warding spell should lose it's effect." said Castiel.

"Why can't you come with me?"

"The magic which tries to prevent your entry has also locked out any non-physical entities."

"Ah," said Dean bleakly, "Ghost burglar alarm."

"I wish I could do more, but as long as the house stands, I can not enter."

"Man, I have slept in some nasty places before, but this..." he said, one hand reaching protectively for the journal notes inside his jacket, "So once I'm in, where will you be?"

"I will wait here."

Dean chewed on his lower lip. "You're not exactly firing on all cylinders. Not much you could do in a fight, if anything snuck up on you."

"There's nothing I could do in a fight, not as I am."

Dean drew from some inner reserve, and turned toward Castiel. "If you need...if you think it would help to have an assist, then..." he said, his hand flattening against his own chest.

"Your soul is already stressed, a power transfer would be too risky."

"I need to know that I have back-up."

"If I took too much-"

"I'm about to nap my way thru a cheap Amityville re-make, exactly how much energy do you think I need?"

Castiel looked at Dean's hand, the one that used to have a ring. He noticed the watch had also gone missing. What else would be stripped away tonight?

"You'll need something to bite down on," he said, "And hurry, the Leviathans will be here soon."

Dean took off his belt, lying on grass that stood three feet high. After decades of being pulled apart by Alastair, it was refreshing to think that a little torture would actually do someone some good.

He closed his eyes against the rain, wondering if this pain would be any different.

Castiel knelt beside him. "I'll try and make it quick."

"Try and not kill me." said Dean, before placing the belt between his teeth.

The windows rattled as a train passed nearby, its whistle almost covering the screams. The house seemed to watch as a little white light flickered, multiplied in window panes that dreamed of gothic architecture.

When it was over, Dean opened his eyes to find Cas looming over him, concern writ large on his face.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

Dean, amazingly, smiled. "Does this mean you're gonna make an honest woman outta me?"

Cas watched him trudge up the front stairs, wishing he could follow. He'd been a sentry during many of Heaven's battles, standing by while his brothers tore each other apart in a distant field, but he'd always been capable of jumping into the fight if needs be. Now, he only had so much power to draw from, and in time their enemies would turn that to their advantage.

He didn't have to wait long.

A lighter clicked, illuminating Pyesell's face as he lit a cigarette. "Care to reconsider our offer?"

"I don't work with filth." said Castiel, trying to sound more menacing than he felt, as he counted some thirty Leviathans lurking nearby.

"You can't kill us," said Pyesell, "And the Winchesters can't outrun us for long."

"It'll be long enough to send you back."

The cigarette glowed red as he sucked on it thoughtfully. "Ya think?"

"I know."

"Oh, WELL then," he said, turning to the figures in the dark, "Right-o, get to work. The rest of you, come with me."

Castiel blinked, suddenly fearful. "What are you doing?"

"I should have done this weeks ago." he said, as his minions began to unload canisters from a truckbed.

"What are you doing?" asked Castiel, louder this time.

"Too late, no one's listening anymore." said Pyesell, as they began to splash gasoline around the outside of the house.

"He's already shifted into the Other house, you'll never get to him in time." said Castiel in desperation, "Your kind don't even know how to sleep."

"Hello, necromancer. I've gone dream-walking through the minds of things that would use your skull as an ice cube tray, I think I can manage one haunted house." said Pyesell, before turning away to instruct his men. "Alright, split up into groups of three, come back with his head."

Castiel balled up his fists, helpless. "I'll just resurrect him."

Pyesell gave him a calculating look, as if trying to decide something, and then flicked the cigarette butt. It passed right through Castiel.

The house was suddenly wreathed in flames, with a heat wave that flattened the grass in a ten-yard radius.

"You couldn't resurrect a bug on a windshield." said Pyesell, as the front door swung shut behind him.

Castiel watched the men go inside, but they did not even spare him a backwards glance. The house was old, and would come down in minutes, if not for the rain. He hoped it would give Dean enough time to complete the ritual to open Purgatory.

Dean's words echoed suddenly. "Run and get help." He didn't have a lot of power, but it might be enough to transport someone here.

Then it came to him. When the Leviathens looked again, he was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Plot summary: Dean's in Dunwich with the means of performing a ritual to open Purgatory, but it requires falling asleep in the Witch House, an ancient structure so soaked in magic that the House has constructed a Dream double of itself that contains the Purgatory gateway. Dean must fall asleep in the house (during which the Leviathans set it on fire, despite Castiel's intervention), find the correct room to perform the ritual in, and survive being chased by the necromancer Pyesell and his minions.

The Witch House dreamed of many rooms.

Despite the cold floor, it was enough to have the wind and rain off of him, and Dean fell asleep the minute he closed his eyes. The room, for the house only had the one, lacked any hiding places, unless he'd wanted to squeeze himself inside the massive brick oven that made up the rear wall, so he didn't see too many options.

He felt a fleeting tug of fear toward Cas, and wondered if he would ever see him again after tonight.

When he opened his eyes again, the eastern window flooded the room with daylight. For a second he was afraid he'd slept thru the whole Leviathen excursion, until he noticed the moon shining thru the opposite window. And the woman in white standing nearby.

"This make you the White Rabbit?" he asked, looking around, "Man if they start playing Jefferson Starship I'm gonna punch a dude."

While her face and hands were well-formed, the rest of her seemed...constructed almost, her limbs and torso thin as dowels rods on a puppet. Like the memory of a woman.

"There he is."

Dean whipped around to the front door. Three black figures, all of them smiling, one of them holding an axe.

The woman grabbed his hand, pulling him through a door and down a spiral staircase that seemed to descend to the center of the Earth.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

The staircase changed and became familiar to him. The stairwell at Shiloh Falls Hospital...where Dad had died.

Another door opened, and she pushed him thru, locking it behind him.

"Cas?" he whispered hopefully.

A phone rang and he picked it up off the wall. "I can hear you Dean."

"The Leviathans are in the house with me, and I don't have any weapons." he said, running his hand along the nurse's station and failing to find so much as a nail file.

"You're not going to find any, the House hasn't dreamed of people, save for the Witch, in centuries. It only dreams of what it sees thru the window every day."

"But I'm in a hospital right now, the one I almost died in."

"It must be melding with your own memories to protect you, it sees you as it's only defense against the fire."

"Wait, fire? What fire?" said Dean, looking around.

"You don't have much time, you have to find the bedroom to perform the ritual."

"And what are you doing?"

"I'm going to get help." said Cas, as the line cut off.

"Great." muttered Dean, as he looked down the hallway. It looked like how he remembered it-well-lit, clean, square. The worst place on Earth.

The first door read SWITCHING STATION, and the sound of trains roaring past shook the door frame. The house had only heard, but never actually seen, a train, and he shuddered to think what may lay on the other side.

The second door read ATLANTIC, written in blue ink. He was about to open it when he looked down and saw water seeping through the crack at the bottom.

So he went on to the third door, which read simply, PIE.

"...can't be that easy." he said, his hand reaching for the third doorknob, and letting go of it suddenly, his hand reddening from the heat. Cas wasn't kidding about the fire.

"I can smell him, he's not far," said a voice in the stairwell, "Stay behind me."

The three Leviathens entered the hall, sniffing the phone Dean had been using.

"Which way you think he took?" one asked, inspecting the three doors, "We'll take one apiece, any longer in this place and we'll be Toast Toasties."

Dean smiled in the dark, hunched above them in the hospital ceiling tiles. Once they were separated, it took very little time to push one in front of a passing train (or in this case, a column of black smoke that howled like a mechanical demon), drown the next, and the axe-wielder?

"You ever read Hansel and Gretel?" he asked it as he pushed it into the brick oven.

Feeling much more confident with the weight of the axe in his hands, he ran back into the hallway, suspecting he knew where to go next.

Sure enough, she was waiting for him.

"Sometimes I wish he'd let me die here." he said, as he watched the woman in white get up from what had been John's hospital bed, "I don't know why I told you that."

She pointed to the wall, her fingertip black with something.

"Blood of a Purgatory creature...well, I think I can accommodate you there." he said, as footsteps gathered nearby, alerted by their comrades screams.

By the time Pyesell managed to find him, the hallway was more black than white, body parts scattered on the floor, heads piled on a gurney like soccer balls. The smell was overpowering, and Pyesell had to strain his ears over the sound of the ocean to hear Dean's labored breathing.

"Down here." Dean rasped. He tried lifting the axe in the air, but only managed a few inches before letting it fall again.

"Busy night." said Pyesell, narrowing his eyes, impressed against his will as the hunter balanced himself with one hand, leaving black handprints as he dragged the axe behind him.

"Ain't over...til I kill you."

"Go ahead." he said, a little smile playing at his lips, as Dean came within reach. He even gave the man a few seconds to catch his breath, but when Dean tried again to lift the axe, Pyesell snatched it out of his hands and tossed it on the floor.

"Looks like John didn't get the bargain he'd hoped for." he said, as he wrapped his hands around Dean's throat.

Dean smiled.

"What, that's funny?" asked Pyesell.

A shot rang out and a hole suddenly appeared between Pyesell's eyes, black goo spraying everywhere. Turning around and dropping Dean to the floor, his face twisted in annoyance. "You."

"Me." said Rachel, as she swung the axe in a wide arc.


	8. Chapter 8

Rachel pulled Dean's arm over her shoulders and yanked him upwards. "Hurry, we wait any longer and the house will fall in on us."

"...right," said Dean blearily, as he noted the Leviathan heads that were slowly making their ways back to their bodies, "The room at the end of the hall, get me a jar of their blood and we can start the ritual."

She plopped him down on the floor of the bedroom before setting off again, and he grabbed the journal notes from his jacket pocket. The numbers no longer ran together incoherently, he found they made perfect sense here in the Dream.

When Rachel returned with the blood, he was kneeling on the bed, putting his hand on the wall and feeling it with one hand.

"It's just on the other side," he said, "I can feel them."

"Who?"

"All of them. All the monsters I killed."

Pushing her glasses up her nose, she handed him the blood and said, "Well they're about to get some new roommates."

He made fast work of it, copying his notes while trying to ignore the sounds of bodies knitting themselves together nearby, and the heat that was starting to make him break out in a sweat.

"Are you almost done?" she asked nervously.

He stared at the completed work. Double-checked his notes. The portal should have opened by now. What was missing?

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, just as a hand reached up to touch his shoulder. "I don't know, maybe I copied it wrong." he said.

Rachel screamed, and he look to find that the hand on his shoulder wasn't connected to anything else. Tossing it across the room with a disgusted noise, he shouted, "Get on the bed, they're starting to regroup."

Jumping up next to him, she took out her gun and aimed it shakily at a torso that was pulling itself along the floor. "Dean..." she hissed, "Why isn't the portal working?"

He looked at her, and for the first time noticed the way she'd dressed herself, the blouse buttoned all the way to the top with a little pearl strand around the collar.

"You weren't lying to me back at your place." he said.

"What?" she said, not taking her eyes off the torso that was slowly lurching toward them, it's entrails trailing behind like black confetti.

"You never been with anyone?"

"What kind of-"

"Yes or no."

Her cheeks blotched with anger, slapping at the papers in his hands. "No, now get on with it you redneck."

"Give me the gun." he said hollowly, turning her to hold her by the waist.

"Okay, but-?"

Bang.

The question froze on her face.

"I'm sorry." he said, the smoke trailing from the barrel.

She tried to speak, but only managed a small choking sound that could be hear over all the other noises in the room. She fell forward onto him, and kissing him softly, his mouth filled with her warm blood.

The spray of her blood touched only some of the sigils on the wall, but they sucked at them, reshaping them until red and blood were the same, and a pocket of darkness twisted into being.

Dean tried to hold onto her, but the effort of killing thirty men had left him half-numb, and he couldn't even gather the will to push her to the floor. With a last look of sad amusement, as if this was all she'd expected from him, Rachel let go of his arm, and was sucked into the void.

The Leviathens began to scream, but in their broken state they had no way to avoiding Purgatory's pull, and instead began to latch onto Dean for purchase. Heads snapped at him like nightmarish shellfish, their voices a high trill. He scrambled on the bed, trying to pry off fingers and teeth, but soon could not even see for the crush of bodies on him.

The top half of Pyesell's head sat on the floor next to him, the bottom half having been severed, and his tongue lolled stupidly from beneath his upper teeth.

Dean was halfway thru the portal now, his hands gripping the rail of the hospital bed, which had flipped sideways against the wall.

"You won't get all of us," said Pyesell, teeth black with ooze, "Even if you get all the ones in this house, there's still hundreds of us across America."

"They can wait their turn." said a booming voice.

Dean looked up. Behind him, in that awful darkness, he could feel more hands reaching out for him. They had been waiting a long time.

All around him the room was on fire, and the roof had been torn off to reveal a bloody sunrise, against which stood a pair of black wings.

"Cas..." he said disbelievingly.

A white marble hand grapsed Dean's amid ashes and leaping flames, and pulled him into the night sky. Some of the Leviathans tried holding on, scratching at his clothes, but the portal sucked at them like an old tooth, and they fell.

Dean barely heard the house collapse over the rushing wind. He didn't bother to look down, all he could do watch Castiel, his body stretched out toward the horizon. Was it an angel who flew too close to the sun? Dean wondered.

"Cas?" he asked again, the wind eating his words.

The moon hid behind a cloud. His wings beat slowly, elegantly, as the fire receded, and between the black sky and blacker water, Castiel was the only source of light.

"Am I going home?"

Cas looked down at him, and said something that Dean didn't quite catch, before his grip weakened, and he fell headlong into the ocean.

Dean awoke on the beach, the back of his throat dry from coughing up salt water. Turning his head to one side, he saw the black smoking remains of the Witch house, the brick oven its only survivor.

"Cops gonna be here any minute." he muttered, pulling himself up on his elbows. A red light blinked through the trees nearby, a crossing signal, and he decided train-hopping would be the fastest exit strategy.

He spotted an empty shipping container and jumped in, wedging himself in a dark corner.

"Hey now, get your own ride." said a high voice.

He looked down. "Maizie?"

She smiled, her rhinestone glasses pink in the dawn light. "Runnin' from the authorities?"

"Well...maybe. Don't tell me you're an outlaw." he said uncertainly, eyeing her knitting bag.

"Me? No, just making sure you got out of town all right."

He licked his lip. "Someone ask you to find me?"

"I ran into your boyfriend last night, before he took Rachel with him," she said, running her nail along some balls of wool, "You think he'd look good in an ivory scarf, or ya think he's more of a navy man?"

Dean said nothing, looking out at the sunrise through a chink in the steel wall.

"Maybe something in a nice mustard, bring out the grey in his eyes." she mused.

"Maizie..." he said, his voice cracking.

"Mmmm?"

"Did Castiel say anything to you, before he left?"

"Didn't really have time, he just said you'd need help come morning."

He had a fleeting memory of angel wings beating against a red sky, and of falling back to Earth, but even now the details were fading. He was tempted to go back to Professor Hickman and give him the official story, if only to get it off his chest.

"Why are your clothes all wet?" asked Maizie, eyes down on her knitting.

He choked back a smartass reply, he was tired of being a dick to women. "Castiel came for me at the last minute, when it was over, just picked me up and flew out. But he couldn't hold on, and he-" he stopped, rubbing his eyes, "...he dropped me into the water."

She looked up, understanding in her face. "You thought you were dead?" she said, the needles pausing mid-click, "You thought he was taking you to the Great Hereafter?"

He didn't reply.

"Well," she said smiling, the needles clicking again, "You must have a very important job here on Earth."

Refusing to cry, he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars. "Yeah, well, sometimes this world feels like a ball and chain."

"Hmmm." she said absently.

Hands still on his eyes, he struggled to think of something, anything good to say, tired of this pity party. "You...you got a nice town."

"Well we're glad you stopped in." she said, slapping his thigh, voice as warm as chicken soup, "You oughta come back in the winter, nothing better than a hot cup of tea while watching the geese fly away in the morning."

He noted a little arrowhead of birds in the distance, dipping below pink-bellied clouds. They looked to be sparrows.

"A host of sparrows." he muttered bitterly.

"...and if you stay for dinner, bring some vanilla ice cream for dessert, my neighbor's got this blueberry pie so good you will DIE," she nattered, not hearing him, "But the geese are my favorite."

He watched the birds for several seconds until they were a pinprick against the sun, and he had to look away it was so bright.

"Where do they go?" he asked.

"Don't know," she said, "Birds...fly to the stars, I guess."

The sunlight broke thru the chink and blinded Dean on one side, his eyes watering.

"That so." he said.

She looked up from her knitting, at his bare feet and dripping clothes. "You got somewhere to go, hon?"

"Yeah, yeah I do," he said, turning to a more familiar problem, "But I'll deal with that when I get to it."

"Then I'll let you go," she said, as the train began to move. And tucking her knitting into her bag, she hiked up her skirt and lept into the grass. "Drop by when you get a chance."

He wanted desperately to sleep, but was afraid of what lingered from the House, and decided that drying off was the next order of business. Pulling his shirt off his head, he looked down and found a brown stain on his collar.

Dean looked up, and found Castiel sitting before him. It was like looking as a projected image against the passing landscape.

"I killed that girl." he confessed weakly, "I'm going to Hell for it this time."

Castiel said nothing. His power was fading, and saying anything would only speed the process.

"Just promise me you'll be there when I die," he said, "I don't think I could face another stint on the rack thinking this was all a fever dream and you're not still out there somewhere."

Cas's face twisted, as if he were all out of promises.

Dean hesitated. "My life's been one long string of dirty memories, and I got nothing to look forward to. It's nice to think that, between this world and the next, I'd die seeing something beautiful for once."

Cas said nothing for a while, his eyes on the horizon as the little sparrows made their way to the end of the world. The dawn cut through the trees, thin pencils of light and shadow flickering across Castiel's face like the bars on a birdcage.

"Watch the sunrise with me," said Cas, "You earned this one."

For a few minutes, the two men sat on the side of the train car, their feet swinging over the high grass, the ocean crashing at a safe distance. The deaths of so many weighed on them, for different reasons, and the good works of last night brought no absolution, but for the first time since Castiel's death, Dean felt some peace.

"You've got blood on your mouth." said Cas, his head reaching out to touch him. It passed right through.

Dean turned to say something, but he was gone, a few motes in the sunlight the only evidence that anyone had been there. 


End file.
